REST Refresher
Objectives
Explain the history of REST
Explain the main actions involved in RESTful architectures
Describe the relationship between REST and HTTP
Introduction
In 2000, Roy Thomas Fielding was frustrated by the haphazard different ways web applications were using the HTTP standard. Specifically he was frustrated with how URLs and their corresponding HTTP Verbs were used differently for every single application. So, in his PhD dissertation he came up with REST or REpresentational State Transfer as a standard way web apps should structure their URLs. It also suggested a few other things, but we focus mostly on how it changed URLs. Fielding also noticed the rise in web applications communicating with each other. Using this standard way of forming URLs to access resources, Fielding hoped that inter-application communication would get much easier.
There is a good chance that you have already worked with RESTful APIs. Integrating a Facebook login, getting repository data from Github, having something in your application post to Twitter, pulling in a feed of images from Instagram, or even calling a list of locations from Google Maps are all examples of using a RESTful API to communicate between applications.
Example REST Workflow
At root, RESTful systems are centered on the idea of a resource. You can think of a resource in the same way you'd think of an object in your code, and in fact, most times a RESTful resource represents a domain object in your system, like a product or a customer.
For a real world case study, let's pretend that you have a newsletter application. The following is a high level view on how REST works in your app:
You open the page that has the blank form that you use to make a new newsletter. In terms of REST, this page represents a request for a
new resource.You fill out the form on the 'New Newsletter' page and click submit. Information about you, your newsletter content and any additional information such as media items are all sent to the application server. The server takes all this information and saves it to the database, creating your newsletter. RESTfully speaking, this server action is
create resource.After the server saves your newsletter, it redirects you to the page where you can view your newly-created newsletter. This is
show resourcein a RESTful system.You decide you want to change the title of your newsletter, so you browse to the page that has the filled-in, editable form for your newsletter. Requesting this page is requesting to
edit resource.You change the title and submit the form. On the server, the new information is applied to your newsletter record. This action is
update resource.Finally, you want to browse all the newsletters to see what else you could subscribe to. Asking for the list of all newsletters is asking for the
indexof the resource.
RESTful Conventions
There are certain conventions that most RESTful systems follow, whether they are a user-facing web application or purely an API. Most systems follow a standard pattern for routing the types of requests we talked about above.
Let's take a look at a practical example of how this works. If you wanted to build out a Newsletter feature we would need the system to have four key actions: Create, Read, Update, and Destroy – commonly known as CRUD actions. In addition to the CRUD actions, we will also need an index page that lists out all of our newsletters – that's five routes. Since our users will need to have a visual interface for creating and updating records (a form for creating and another form for updating), we will need two more routes. Putting all of that together, we end up with seven different routes.
HTTP Verbs and REST
For routes that render content to the browser, or are considered read-only (that is, they don't change data on the server), we use the HTTP GET verb. With a GET request, we get a view of a resource. These are the routes that we typically use when we click links.
If a route results in a change to data, we use different verbs based on the action.
If a new resource is being created, we use POST. A POST method encloses some data with the request that the server will use to create the requested resource.
If an existing resource is being updated, like changing the title of our newsletter, we use PATCH. Similar to POST, PATCH encloses data in the request that will be used to identify the existing resource and update its attributes.
If we want to destroy a resource, we use the DELETE verb. A DELETE request will include the resource identifier so it can be found and deleted.
Note: Sometimes you'll see PUT interchangeably with PATCH. Technically speaking, PUT should only be used if an entire resource is being replaced, whereas PATCH is used to update a resource, but these things have evolved over time, so pay close attention to the documentation of any APIs you're working with. The reality is that you can do any job with any verb, for instance, you could design an API that uses GET requests for destroy actions, but generally we want to try to follow these conventions as best we can to avoid confusion and reveal intent with our APIs.
Routes
Routes are simply the combination of an HTTP verb and a URI. When we create a system, we have to define the routes by which people will access our resources.
Armed with an understanding of which verbs are for which actions, here is what our newsletter application's routes might look like.
Let's examine a few of these in more detail.
It makes sense that /newsletters shows the collection of all newsletters, but why is the create action also /newsletters and not something like /newsletters/create?
RESTful routing is all about mapping routes to resources in a way that makes semantic sense. In this case, what are we really doing when we create a newsletter? We are adding a new item to the collection of all newsletters. So if the proper route to view all newsletters is get /newsletters, then it makes sense, semantically, that the proper route to create a new entry in the collection of all newsletters would be POST /newsletters.
Similarly, we have three routes that are all pointing to /newsletters/:id. This is why we use different verbs to do different actions. Because showing, updating, and deleting a newsletter are all actions on the same resource, it makes sense that they'd have the same path, /newsletters/:id, and use the different verbs to represent the action being taken.
Nested Routes
We often need to access resources as they relate to parent resources, and our RESTful routes can support that. The generic convention looks like this: /parent/:id/children/:id/:action, using the same verbs for the same actions as we would a non-nested route.
As an example, let's say our newsletter had an id of 17. Every week, when we send out our newsletter, we create a new entry. How would we expect to interact with the entries of our newsletter in a RESTful system?
Here, when we want to see all entries of a newsletter, we go through /newsletters/:id/entries to get there, because we want to filter our results to just the one newsletter.
Similarly, when we create a new entry, it has to be associated with a newsletter, so it makes sense to have those routes also go through the parent /newsletters/:id route.
However, when it gets down to acting on a single entry, we can just go directly to the entry. We don't need the parent newsletter to PATCH an entry or GET an entry or DELETE an entry, because we are operating on the individual resource.
Looking at these routes, we can start to see that the way we set up our RESTful URLs becomes a reflection of the rules of our system. If we don't want people to look at an index of all entries without the context of a parent newsletter, we don't define a GET /entries route. If we want to force people to always be in the context of a parent newsletter when viewing a single entry, we would replace that GET /entries/:id route with GET /newsletters/:id/entries/:entry_id. And if we wanted to allow both, we could have both routes.
Every choice you make when designing a RESTful API defines how someone uses the system, so choose wisely!
Summary
Below are a few keys to remember when thinking about REST:
REST is an architectural design pattern, not a framework or code in itself. Many web frameworks utilize RESTful design principles in some form or another. By using RESTful principles, our apps are able to have a clear and standardized naming structure for routes and actions.
RESTful routes have a clear mapping between the URL resource and the corresponding controller actions.
Using the appropriate HTTP verb is key to differentiating the purpose of routes with the same URI.
Resources
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